In general, the Massachusetts personal income tax follows the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code ("the Code" or "IRC") as amended through January 1, 1998, and in effect for the taxable year, in determining Massachusetts gross income. In particular, Massachusetts follows IRC § 132(f) as amended and in effect on January 1, 1998, which excludes from an employee's gross income (subject to a monthly maximum) employer-provided parking, transit passes and vanpool benefits (i.e. "qualified transportation benefits"). However, a federal Act subsequent to January 1, 1998, created differences between the Massachusetts and federal exclusion amounts. Technical Information Releases ("TIRs") 98-15 and 99-23 describe these Code changes and how they affect the Massachusetts personal income tax. This TIR explains the Massachusetts exclusion amounts for tax year 2004.

IRS Revenue Procedure 2003-85 provides the 2004 cost-of-living inflation adjustment for the qualified transportation fringe benefit monthly exclusion amounts allowed under IRC § 132(f)(2). The federal exclusion amounts for tax year 2004 are $195 per month for employer-provided parking and $100 per month for employer-provided vanpool and transit pass benefits combined. Revenue Procedure 2003-85, § 3.12. In contrast, Massachusetts follows the inflation adjustment formula allowed under the January 1, 1998 Code. As a result, the Massachusetts exclusion amounts for tax year 2004 are $200 per month for employer-provided parking and $75 per month for employer-provided vanpool and transit pass benefits combined.

Massachusetts does not adopt the federal gross income exclusion for transit pass and employer-provided vanpool benefits if the employer offers the benefit as a reduction in salary and the employee chooses the benefit in lieu of salary. The federal provision allowing the choice of salary or transit pass and employer-provided vanpool benefits was enacted on June 6, 1998, and therefore, is not incorporated into the Code as amended and in effect on January 1, 1998.

As a result, if an employee's salary and federal gross income have been reduced by the value of a transit pass or employer-provided vanpool benefit, the employer must add back the exclusion amount (in the employee's W-2) for Massachusetts tax purposes. TIR 99-23.

Tool Name: Baynote, Inc. Recommendations

The information below summarizes privacy policy terms related to content recommendations on Mass.Gov and is excerpted from the full Mass.gov privacy policy.

Purpose: Displays relevant content recommendation based on the site usage pattern of all users of Mass.Gov. If Personalization is enabled (the default setting), your personal site usage pattern today and on prior visits to Mass.gov will be displayed to you and will also be a factor in determining personalized relevant recommendations for you.

Data Collected: A random anonymous unique identifier is assigned and tracked for each user of the website. This identifier is sent to our vendor, Baynote, when you view a page, open a document or click a link on Mass.Gov. Our vendor then analyzes the specific content that was viewed and provides content recommendations to similar content that you may find useful. A full description of what data Baynote collects and how it uses this data is available at http://www.baynote.com/baynote-services-privacy-policy/. Please note that the tool uses persistent cookies. These cookies will be Mass.gov domain cookies and not Baynote domain cookies. The cookies will store information related to a user’s Mass.gov Web site usage, including the URL and title of sites recently visited and the random anonymous unique identifier assigned to the user. In general, and as described in more detail in Baynote’s service privacy policy linked to above, Baynote only uses the personalized information it gathers to provide recommendation services and display past usage for Mass.Gov users and will not share this information with any third parties, including advertisers. The information collected will not affect content you may see on sites unaffiliated with Mass.Gov.

Express Opt Out: If personalization of recommendations based on the content you view is not desired, or you do not wish to display a list of recently viewed Mass.gov pages, you may turn personalization off. You can do this by using either the switch located below in this privacy policy or an identical switch located directly above the content recommendations and recently viewed content boxes displayed on the Mass.gov site. Once you turn off personalization, your content recommendations will be based on the overall traffic patterns of all users of Mass.Gov and they will not specifically take into account your own personal usage patterns. If you turn off personalization, information collected by this Tool that is associated with your content usage will be deleted from your cookies, and no further information about your content usage will be sent to our vendor.

Disabling personalization will affect both content recommendations and recently viewed page links. If you turn off personalization, this “off” setting will persist as you browse Mass.Gov and during any future sessions. The opt-out setting is stored in a persistent cookie on your computer. The setting will remain in effect so long as you use the same computer with the same Internet browser. If you delete the cookie that contains the opt-out setting or use a different browser or computer, personalization will be enabled and you will need to disable it again on your next visit, if desired.

For our full privacy policy, please close this window and see the Site Policies or Privacy Policy link in the footer of the page.